One of the hardest things to keep under wraps has been the name itself - Icons: Combat Arena. We first had the idea over a year ago! Coming up with a short, memorable name that also describes the game, all while trying to add a new spin, brings all sorts of challenges. [1]

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The game was based with these requirements

It had to be broader than something super specific to other platform fighters. The name "Wavedash" for the company name signals the background of the platform fighter community, but it's a pretty narrow name when applied to a game.

That said, the devs didn't want to retread using a synonym for fighters or myths, such as Legends, Champions, Heroes, etc. Pretty much 100% of the synonyms for "fighter" and "legend" are taken by other games.

It couldn't directly take from the name of another platform fighter. Icons are something new.

It had to get to the central motivation of the game.

Developing what makes the competitive platform fighter community great, the developers realized the core motivations are self improvement, performance, and the thrill of competition in front of an audience. That audience could be a stadium of fans, thousands on stream, or the other three people on your couch.

With a new age in gaming of streamers and esports, there was an opportunity to build the game around the celebrity side of prize fights. This would set the game apart from the many other games out there that are primarily selling the fantasy of "beat your opponent to a bloody pulp." Nothing wrong with that, of course - it's just not what drives us to keep playing platform fighters for hours and hours.

The name "Icons" hit every note as wanted. It gets to the performance side of fighting. It doesn't force a synonym of "champions" or "league". And, importantly, it was wide open in the video game space. Discovering that the domain icons.gg was available, it was sealed.

"Icons" hit the emotions for the title itself, but doesn't shout "video game!" on its own. It also has issues with search engine optimization. There was needed a subtitle in order to signal that this is a game, and to help people find it on Google.

Titles like Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and Halo: Combat Evolved are these huge brands built around everything before the colon. The subtitle was there to get people in the first time and to help with SEO, but otherwise it melts away from view.

After many more rounds, it was decided to be direct. "Combat Arena." The game is combat, and it's in an arena. It's an important part of the title, though in practice it's just called "Icons" internally. It's expected that eventually the subtitle will become invisible and Icons will be what everyone remembers.

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